Monstrous

Maureen Dowd [who expertly invokes the mythical Humanzee. Yes, there's humanzees in the link that follows] talks about the new age of the Republican monster:

President George W. Bush's experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq created his own chimeras, by injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy, and blending warring factions and sects. Some of the forces unleashed are promising; others are frightening.

In a chilling classified report to Congress last week, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, conceded that Iraq and Afghanistan operations have restricted the Pentagon's ability to handle other conflicts.

That's an ominous admission in light of North Korea's rush toward nukes, which was spurred on by the Iraq invasion and North Korea's conviction that, in bargaining with Bush, real weapons trump imaginary - or chimerical - ones.

The U.S. invasion also spawned a torture scandal, and its own chimeric (alas, not chimerical) blend of former enemies - the Baathists and foreign jihadists - with access to Iraqi weapons caches.

The Republican Party is now a chimera, too, a mutant of old guard Republicans, who want government kept out of Americans' lives, and evangelical Christians, who want government to legislate religion into Americans' lives.

But exploiting God for political ends has set off powerful, scary forces in America: a retreat on teaching evolution, most recently in Kansas; fights over sex education, even in the blue states and blue suburbs of Maryland; a demonizing of gays; and a fear of stem cell research, which could lead to more of a "culture of life" than keeping one vegetative woman hooked up to a feeding tube.

Even as scientists issue rules on chimeras in labs, a spine-tingling he-monster with the power to drag us back into the pre-Darwinian dark ages is slouching around Washington. It's a fire-breathing creature with the head of W., the body of Bill Frist and the serpent tail of Tom DeLay.

And, at heart, Dowd strikes the chord of Dr. Frankenstein, who discovered the secrets to manipulating life itself. It was not the fact that he could learn the secrets of the manipulation to recreate life that caused his Monster to cascade across the frozen north looking for both companionship and violence, but it was the fact of Frankensteins manipulation. Once he forced his will maniacally into the world, that will morphed into a monster of violent potential despite its warm desires. And so, as the Republicans push forward their will into the culture, the culture will turn in unexpected, though likely dangerous, new ways.